World of Warcraft Rogue Guide   

Welcome to my World of Warcraft Rogue Guide, I expect most of my visitors will contain sneaky backstabbers but that won’t withhold me from informing you on you class. If you’re looking for a class that revolves around trickery, subtlety with high damage revolving around dual wielding you’re on your way to the right class. 

Getting Started 

The rogue has the option of choosing between a wide choice of races. For the Horde this is Blood Elf, Undead, Orc and Troll whereas the Alliance can pick between Gnome, Human, Dwarf and Night elf. For general play your race’s added passives and abilities won’t show. If you’re a min-maxer however there are some racials you have to take into account 

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Expertise racials – These racials give you a bonus to expertise with certain weapons. This allows you to gear slightly different in end game raiding giving a slight damage bonus. Dwarf get a mace specialization, Humans a mace and sword specialization. For the horde, Orcs get a bonus with axes.
Player Versus Player – Humans get an ability that removes the need for using a player versus player trinket. This is by far the best racial you can get. Gnomes get an ability to instantly remove any root or snare effect from themselves. Undead get Will of the Forsaken which removes a charm/fear/sleep effect while Blood Elves get an area of effect silence which also restores 15 energy.
Misc- Orcs get an ability that significantly increases their attack power for 15 seconds. Trolls are able to increase their attack speed by 20% for 10 seconds. 

Rogue Talent Trees 

The rogue has 3 talent trees that completely change the way he does his damage. I will give you an overview of them in the following paragraphs. 

Mutilate – This tree focuses around dealing damage with daggers while boosting poison damage. You will do a lot of damage in this spec simply by hitting the enemy with your weapons. Unlike other trees, the focus towards poison means you get an interesting mix between nature and physical damage with this specialization. 

Combat – This tree focuses on standing toe to toe with enemies. Instead of dealing the more bursty damage of the other trees it prefers sustained damage. You are able to choose from a wide variety of weapons such as swords, maces and fist weapons. 

Subtlety – As the name suggests this tree is focused more on sneaking around. As such a lot of talents increase the damage from stealth, including directly increasing the damage on your stealth only openers. On top of this it also provides the rogue with additional abilities to be even more tricky to deal with. This includes stuff to add combo points (more on this later) to your target or an ability to remove the cooldowns from a vast amount of your abilities. 

Rogue Mechanics 

Energy – The rogue deals damage using a resource called energy. The maximum amount you can have is 100. Whenever you use an ability, each having a specific energy cost, your energy will drop down after which it’ll start regenerating back to 100. As such the rogue’s damage is capped by his current energy. This means that to be efficient as a rogue you have to carefully decide which ability to use as to not waste your precious energy. For example, a lot of monsters and players cast spells which you can interrupt with your “Kick” ability. This however costs 25 energy. This means that if you’re fighting something that suddenly starts to cast a heal you’ll be wanting to be prepared so that you always have at least 25 energy to use your kick ability. You have to remember that aslong as you’re not sitting at 100 energy you’re NOT wasting damage. Just because you have enough energy to use an ability doesn’t mean you have to use it right away to maximize your damage. 

Combo Points and Finishers – The Rogue works around a Combo System. This means that certain abilities will give you 1 combo point when used up to a maximum of 5. To use up your combo points you have other abilities which scale with the amount of combo points you have. For example Slice and Dice(rank 2) gives you a temporary 40% buff to attack speed. The more combo points you have saved up the longer the buff will last. On the other hand Eviscerate is another finisher. It deals damage based on how many combo points you have. As a final example, Kidney Shot is a finisher that stuns your target. The duration of the stun depends on your combo points 

Poisons - Another unique mechanic to the rogue is their ability to enchant their weapons with powerful poisons. Each poison has their own chance to trigger a special effect on the target :
Crippling Poison – This greatly reduces the enemy’s movement speed.
Mind Numbing Poison – This poison reduces the enemy’s spell casting speed.
Instant Poison – This poison deals direct nature damage to your target
Deadly Poison – Adds a damage over time poison to your target which can stack up to 5 times dealing more damage for every stack.
Wound Poison – Deals a bit less damage than instant poison while adding a debuff to the target that reduces the healing they take.
Anesthethic Poison – Lowers your threat reducing the chance you will be attacked by monsters. In addition to this is also removes enrage effects which is often used by monsters, including in raids. Enrage effects usually significantly increase a monsters’ damage and have to be taken off as quickly as possible. 

Stealth  - The rogue is build around the stealth ability. Besides being able to sneak past hostile mobs it also grants you access to a few unique abilities:
Garrote – This applies a powerful damage over time effect to the target and grants 1 combo point. At higher levels this also silences your target for 3 seconds (prevents casting of spells).
Ambush – With a dagger equipped in your mainhand you are able to ambush your target. This deals massive amounts of damage and grants you 2 combo points.
Sap – This ability allows you to incapitate a humanoid (also beasts, dragonkin and demons at higher levels) for a long duration. This is basically a stun that breaks the moment the target takes damage.
Cheap Shot – This ability stuns your target for 4 seconds and grants 2 combo points.
Pick Pocket – This allows you to pick pocket humanoid and undead targets giving you random items/gold. 

 If you wish to continue reading this World of Warcraft Rogue Guide you can find page 2 here, WoW Rogue Guide

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